The filmmaker who blamed Clint Eastwood for ruining their career: “A very impatient man”
Nobody makes it to the summit of Hollywood and stays there for as long as Clint Eastwood without having a little bit of a mean streak, and one filmmaker claimed they were on the receiving end.
For the most part, people love working with Eastwood, which is why he maintained the same core crew for so many productions. Like a grizzled, exponentially more talented version of Adam Sandler, if you impressed the Malpaso head honcho once, then there was a job waiting for you on the next picture.
However, piss him off, and suffer the consequences. Fritz Manes was a member of the actor and filmmaker’s inner circle for years, but after running afoul of the four-time Academy Award winner, he was excommunicated after a dozen productions, and never once worked in the movie business again.
In the early 1970s, it looked as though Frank Stanley had been permanently welcomed into the fold. The cinematographer lensed Breezy, Magnum Force, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, but the shit hit the fan when he ventured to Europe to capture his fourth consecutive Eastwood flick, 1975’s The Eiger Sanction.
A troubled shoot, which resulted in the death of a stuntman, Stanley himself suffered an injury when he was hospitalised after a ten-foot fall. Knowing how the industry worked, he wanted to get back on set as soon as possible. “I realised if I folded up in the show, I’d probably never get a job again,” he reasoned, which is almost what happened anyway.
Referring to Eastwood as “a very impatient man” who “doesn’t really plan his pictures or do any homework, truthfully,” he assumed it was in his best interests to get back to work. When he did, the tensions continued between the two men, including an awkward moment when capturing a love scene between the director and star and his onscreen love interest, Vonetta McGee.
“I was kind of embarrassed to say anything,” Stanley recalled. “But, finally, I said, ‘Clint, you know we ran out of film about five minutes ago.'” Eastwood had been hard on the DP throughout the production, even when he was injured and recuperating while still doing his duties, leaving him to suggest that The Eiger Sanction was directly responsible for his career reaching a dead end immediately afterward.
After four movies in a row, he never worked with or for Eastwood again. His next three credits were on made-for-TV films, and as someone who was “looking forward to a brilliant future” when he began the action thriller, Stanley became convinced that the rumours that he’d “had a heart attack, or was inept” had halted his professional progress in its tracks.
According to a friend, Stanley was convinced that Eastwood had bad-mouthed him around town, and because “Clint hated anybody who was weak,” he tried to tarnish the cinematographer’s reputation. If that was true, it worked to at least some extent, since the highest-profile projects he worked on after The Eiger Sanction were either Car Wash or Grease 2, a far cry from being one of a legendary figure’s go-to guys.
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